Online Gift Vouchers

*Please Note you will need to update your Admin User security rights to allow resending automated Gift Vouchers or to manually create Gift Vouchers. See Security around Gift Vouchers section below.

The ab commerce gift voucher module offers retailers who don't have an integrated gift voucher platform the option to sell Online Gift Vouchers.

This also allows you to create online gift vouchers manually and email them to your customers (e.g. in case they got damaged goods from you in the post and you want to give them a voucher instead).

If you chose to, and are ok around the security concerns regarding gift vouchers listed below, the whole online gift vouchers process can be fully automated from the purchase of online gift vouchers right through to automatically emailing the vouchers out to your customers with no manual input required.

How does online gift vouchers work within AB Commerce

Within AB Commerce, you can do the following:

• You can set up a GIFT VOUCHER product which will then ask the user to enter additional fields when adding the gift voucher to their basket - the extra fields asked for are To Name, To Email, From Name, Message and the optional Preferred Send Date for Gift Voucher Email
• You can switch on within AB Commerce the automatic creation of online gift voucher codes as the customer completes their order
• You can either manually click SEND beside a gift voucher to have that code emailed out to the customer - or you can turn on a batch job which automatically sends out all gift vouchers after a specified number of hours that you decide (the default is 3 hours after the order is made)

Security around Gift Vouchers

Online fraudsters often purchase gift vouchers online and they use websites which emails the voucher after they purchase it with a fraudulent credit card.  To counter this, we have made the automated batch job for sending online vouchers as an option that you turn on if you choose.  And if you turn it on, we also allow you configure the delay between when the order is made and when the email is sent out (the default is 3 hours).

It's important that you put careful processes in place around the sending out of gift vouchers, and the processing of orders that have been partly or fully paid for by gift voucher(s).

Also, you need to be careful with internal web admins on your team as some may be tempted to create a voucher for themselves and give them to friends to purchase goods "for free".  To counter this, you must assign your internal user account the Voucher Security Right for them to be able to view voucher codes, add new vouchers, edit existing vouchers, or delete vouchers.  All other users with the Order Security Right can view online vouchers along with their associated orders, and click Send / Resend beside a voucher, but they cant view the voucher code, add vouchers, update vouchers or delete vouchers.

This is the screen that a user without the Voucher Security Right but with the Order Security Right can see.  You will see that they can see the vouchers, can click Send if one has not been sent yet, or Resend if they have already been sent the voucher - but they cant see the voucher code, the option to Add or Update a voucher (or change an email address on a voucher), or the option to Delete a voucher.

Note that the list of vouchers only shows SEND beside vouchers that have a TO EMAIL, and calls the button RESEND if a voucher has already been sent out.

Note also that the person who ordered the voucher is also CC'ed on all voucher emails.

This is the screen that a user with the Voucher Security Right can see with the extra options now available to them:

How to Set up a Gift Voucher Product

To create a gift voucher product, you just need to check the following Is Gift Voucher box under Add/Update Product under the Product Details tab (under Advanced Settings):

Once this is checked, the following fields will appear for that product on the product detail page:

If you contact the HELP DESK, they can turn on a Date to Send field for the email as this is not automatically enabled (e.g. so the user can elect for the email to get sent on someone's birthday), but you should have the automated emails batch job running if you turn this on to ensure that the email does get sent out on or around that date.

How to Generate a Voucher Code

For vouchers that are not automatically created at the time of the order, you can create them manually (e.g. if you want to send a voucher code to a customer because their product was damaged in the post):

1. Log in as Web Admin
2. Select Orders and then Online Vouchers
3. Click Add New Voucher 
4. Complete the following fields (see example below)

   Voucher Amount
   Currency
   To Name
   To Email
   From Name
   Message
   Active Until

5. Save Changes

How to Redeem a Voucher

Your customers can then use this gift voucher during checkout by clicking Apply Code on the View Basket page.

Automate the Creation of Online Vouchers

You can ask the Help Desk to turn on the automatic creation of online gift vouchers when they are ordered.  When turned on, the voucher is created in the voucher list (see screenshot above) but not emailed out. You can click SEND EMAIL to send out the email (or have this automated too as described in the next section of this article).

Automating the emailing out of the vouchers
Contact the Help Desk who can turn on the batch job which will then automatically click SEND beside each of the vouchers that have not been sent out yet.

By default, it waits 3 hours to send out the emails, but you can ask the Help Desk to change this to longer or shorter (e.g. they can set it to email vouchers after 48 hours OR to email them out within a few minutes of the order).

Note that if you create a gift voucher manually and have entered a TO EMAIL for this, it will also get automatically emailed out by this batch job if it has not been emailed out manually.

Changing the Gift Voucher Email Template

AB Commerce has a default gift voucher email template that you will be using from the start.

At any time, you can view and/or edit this by following these steps:

• Log on as web admin and click on Marketing - Emails and click on Gift Voucher Email
• In the resulting screen, you will see the current automated email - you can click on EDIT CONTENT to edit the content of the email:
  • In the left sidebar, you can edit these:
    • TEST EMAIL SETTINGS: Before you can click Save to any changes, you must send a test email to yourself (or else your changes could break the website without you knowing) - to do this, just enter the following fields and then you can click Send Test Email at any time to preview your changes through your email account before clicking Save:
      • Test Email To Address: Enter your email address here
      • Test Email Sign-off: You cant click Save until you check this button to say that you have received a test email and you are happy to sign off on this
    • Email Subject: This is the title of the email that will be sent.  It's probably best not to change this as the default subject shows the receiver that they have received an voucher from someone they know which may make them more comfortable opening it.
    • From Email: This is the email address that the email will be sent from.
      • NOTE: This email address must be validated or else the email will not send.
    • From Email Name: If you want the FROM address to display something other than the email address, enter it here.
    • Title: This appears at the top of the email.
  • You can also click in the blue boxes in the main page to make edits to the content displayed.
    • NOTE that you should put in the text [FROMNAME] where you want the sender's name to go.  And [TONAME] where you want the receiver's name to go.
    • NOTE that you should use the HEADERS list under the FORMATS dropdown in the screen below to format the content.
  • Click Preview to preview your changes, click Send Test Email to preview your changes through your email account + if you are happy with them, click Save
  • The changes will update when the cache is cleared - if you want them to happen immediately, just clear the cache.

To view reports on Gift Voucher usage navigate to Analytics > Reports on your dashboard and search for V5 Voucher Usage - Order Details, Download CSV File.